


Drowning

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 2x09 Spoilers, Coda to 'Party Guessed', Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 14:46:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his old school’s swimming pool, he had been paralyzed from the neck down, capable only of utilizing his mind and his mouth, and any and all efforts were as futile then as they are now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> I took two Benedryl tonight because my hives wouldn't go away on their own, so it's entirely possible this thing isn't coherent, but it wouldn't leave me alone, and I'm too distracted to write more for _Until I wrap myself inside your arms I cannot rest_ or _Something Wicked_. I apologize for the delay - there should be an update to at least one of them by tomorrow night, though I make no promises.

Watching Lydia Martin bring back his uncle, Derek feels as though he is drowning. Failure and fear coil together in an inescapable rope around his mind. Even as Lydia chants, he feels the bonds he has with the rest of the pack shifting, their center changing. No longer do they revolve around him, imbuing him with the strength an alpha draws from his pack. Instead, they are slipping steadily away, like the last vestiges of breath escaping in misshapen bubbles into the water, converging on the rapidly reforming nightmare made real in his ancestral home.

Distantly, he can sense each of the pups under his care reacting to the changes in the pack, to the growing impression of _wrongness_ that his previously-dead uncle’s leadership permeates. In a fit of dark humor, he wonders at the irony of finally bringing Scott into the fold, under his protection, only to be the unwilling conduit for throwing him straight back into the hell Derek tried to prevent him from facing before.

Worse still, he can feel the special bond, the one he only allows himself to examine in passing, snapping under the pressure, rendering his connection to Stiles almost non-existent. Although, perhaps he should be grateful.

No.

He _is_ grateful.

He can think of precious few things that could be more terrifying than his mate finding himself bound to Peter without a single clue as to why. It is this thought that allows him to endure the rest of the ritual, that convinces him he needs to fight until the very last syllable spills from Lydia’s tongue, because he knows without a doubt that his uncle will want Stiles, and one way or another, he will have him - unless Derek can find some way to end this.

He can’t.

Weakened by the wolfsbane and under the mercy of the full moon, Derek is powerless to stop this perversion of the order of things, of life and death. In his old school’s swimming pool, he had been paralyzed from the neck down, capable only of utilizing his mind and his mouth, and any and all efforts were as futile then as they are now. He rails against it with all the of the anger he has anchored himself with since Kate Argent sent his world crashing down in flames, and still it is not enough. He realizes now that it will never _be_ enough. He should have trusted his instincts more, for all he had himself firmly convinced that he trusted them above all other things. The moment he knew what Stiles was to him, he should have found a way to let go of the anger and replace it with love, the anchor he’d used from the time he was old enough to understand the concept of reining in his abilities, to the time that someone took that love and made it into a weapon - and his resulting reluctance to open himself up to loving once more is the very reason he is going to fail, similar to the way it led Stiles to drop him in the pool for roughly thirty horrifying seconds.

There’s that irony again.

When at last Lydia completes her task, his already-tenuous hold on his humanity slips away, and he knows his eyes now shine an unnaturally luminescent blue. In one night, his position in the pack has been stolen, his ability to protect the pups has been severely diminished, and he has lost an integral part of himself, and it’s almost as if his lungs have begun to succumb to the lack of oxygen.

He doesn’t know how, but he has to believe that Stiles will find a way to bring him back to the air he so desperately needs, because if he can’t -

He is truly gone.


End file.
